


Light

by Tierfal



Series: Embers [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Angst, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 20:58:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roy reorients himself around the absences.</p>
<p>[Major spoilers for '03/CoS.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't intend to keep going, but then… [BUT THEN](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFtjn4xOgOI).
> 
> ~~Not exactly thrilled with how it turned out, but… win some, lose some, spam internet with all.~~

He had felt that there was something wrong.

Well. Of course he had. Hardly a soldier rides to battle believing the world is in balance. Rare is the man who can gallivant off towards his doom.

But it was more than that. Something other than the shadow of the marionette strings; something other than the cold breath of destiny on the back of his neck.

When he first woke—to a world angled sideways from the way it had been; to an off-white ceiling riddled with tiny cracks; to pale sheets and bandaged hands; to a distant roar of sedated pain based nowhere and everywhere at once, throbbing faintly in his shoulder and the left-side darkness, raging just beyond the heavy magic of the morphine inching through the needle in his skin—it took him several minutes to force his own mind past the shock.

He hadn’t planned for waking up.

Bradley—Bradley he had needed to _survive_ ; Bradley he had needed, had had no _choice_ , but to outlast, because he had needed to know that it was done.  Bradley had to be destroyed, and Roy has never trusted any power but his own.  That he had needed to see for himself, and see _through_ , to the end, to the last, to the final gasp of something-like-human breath; to the dwindling of the inferno to soot and splattered blood.  That he had needed to be sure of, beyond a flicker of a shadow of a doubt.  That he had needed to live through, so that he could _know_.

But when he staggered out onto the marble steps, with Selim’s broken body in his aching arms, and saw the terrible remains of Frank Archer… well.  If death was mortifyingly grotesque—a twisted horror, a wreck of cheap metal and deranged ambition and melted flesh—then it looked a lot like life, didn’t it?

His last flare of thought as the muzzle flash scarred his vision was a feeble prayer that Ed had made it out.  Perhaps, this once, some god would listen.

He’s never trusted any power but his own.

It was only when the sheer disbelief had dissipated—when he’d raised an unsteady hand to touch the well of gauze obscuring the left half of his face; when he’d registered the dull beat of his own pulse and counted out a dozen breaths, just to be _sure_ —it was only then that he remembered who and what and where he was. And it was then that he called with half a voice for Riza.

Later, as the flood of medical personnel washed back out of the door and on to the corridor, to the building, to the outside, to the _world_ beyond these walls, to a world that was missing a piece so critical he felt its absence more strongly than the loss of the eye—later, he realized what it was that had seemed so unsettling the night that he and Ed had parted.

Ed hadn’t had his coat.

The flash of scarlet fabric was his _trademark_ —wearing it, he seemed just that little bit larger; he seemed to take up that much more space.  It was a defiant red pennant among all the cold military colors; it was a symbol of strength and a banner of allegiance.  Alchemy before Amestris.  It was his armor.  And, in some way, with its vibrant folds that never frayed, never tore, never faded, no matter the abuse—in some way, it was his soul.

He hadn’t had it, when they said goodbye. He went off to the fight of his life without his talisman. He was just another dark spot in the dying afternoon, fading in among the shadows before Roy could reach for him. And then he was gone.

But not dead.

With a deaf ear turned to Riza’s better judgment (and doesn’t that suit?), he descended to the city underground. All the while he felt the prickle of curious, unnatural eyes upon his back; all the while he held his thumb and his first finger so close together that his knuckles ached—but there was nothing. No evidence, no traces, nothing left behind.

Ed cannot be dead.

Every scientist knows why— _energy_ can’t be obliterated; it can only be transformed. Ed is lightning. Ed is sunlight. Ed’s an open flame.

Roy writes, because he doesn’t feel up to talking. There’s still too much ash in his heart, and still too much gunpowder in his throat. But as the letters unfurl in his hands—from Rosé Thomas, from Maria Ross, from Russell Tringham, from Alphonse, from the woman Ed called ‘Teacher’—the little words that spill out on the pages only solidify what he already knows.

Firstly, nothing on this planet can be traded for a human life. Secondly, the Elrics had the Philosopher’s Stone. Thirdly, the Gate (and he’s brushed it; oh, how _many_ times he’s touched it in his dreams; the stone is warm, but its misty, grasping tendrils are _always_ cold) doesn’t play by any set of rules.

Ed’s death could not be exchanged for Alphonse’s life.

Ed is gone.

But he’s _alive_.

And as the days wear on, as the hours grind down, as the months crawl, and the air turns crystalline… Roy sees the color of the coat sometimes.

It’s in the first swell when he cuts himself on the jagged edge of a tin can. It’s at the very edges of a fire lit with a stubborn match. It’s on the back of his eyelid when he raises his face to a fragile sunbeam and lets himself begin to hope.

Ed’s alive.

And Ed is coming back.


End file.
